Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  The two stopped at Applethorpe for a fortnight, and before that time was over they knew exactly how they stood. The smash was complete. A series of disasters had fallen, and Mr. Carlingford’s fortune of not less than a quarter of a million had gone. Upwards of £100,000 of this had been in two Australian banks, in which he held both deposit and shares. These two banks had failed; he was unable to withdraw his deposit, and there were heavy calls to be met on his shares. He had known this for some months, but the money he derived from his £150,000 in the business would have enabled him to meet these, for he lived considerably below his income. But for five years or so the business had been managed in a very different manner from that in which it had been carried on under Mr. Carlingford. The elder partner had about this time embarked on several investments, which, though not exactly risky, were not the kind of venture fit for a steady-going house. These had turned out well; he had lost his head a little when he saw a six months’ profit safely harvested in two, and he had been led on — by the prospect of making a fortune by a few successful coups — into speculations which were on the far side of ‘risky. Luck had been against him, and he had attempted to get back his losses by even more adventurous means, and it appeared that for two years Mr. Carlingford’s income had been paid, not out of profits, but out of capital. Then came the coup de grace. The younger partner had got into the hands of money-lenders, had sunk deeper and deeper, and when he found that his own signature was considered valueless, had signed a note of hand in the name of the house. The father, trying to shield his son, had speculated wildly in certain South American securities, and these had failed. Inasmuch as Mr. Carlingford was still a partner, he was liable for the debts of the house, and it was feared that even a complete sale of his furniture and stables would hardly cover his liabilities, even after other stocks and shares which he held had been disposed of.

  To Tom himself nothing remained but the £1500 left him by his godmother, which could not be touched by his father’s creditors. Against that he had to set his own outstanding bills, about which he felt unpleasantly vague. The anxiety he secretly felt he would scarcely confess even to himself. He had a full belief in his own powers, and it would have been a faithless thing to doubt them at the very moment when the test was to be applied. He talked the matter out fully and frankly with May, and if he had any private anxiety, at any rate she had not “We shall be awfully poor, dear,” he said. “ I don’t know what there will be over when our bills are paid, but it won’t be much. Of course we won’t touch your £500; but we must live on the capital of the other until I have finished something to sell, I wish to goodness I had paid all my bills before. But they must be paid now at once. I want start fresh.”

  “Where shall we live?” asked May.

  “Wallingthorpe wrote to me yesterday, and told me of a flat somewhere up in Bloomsbury, which could be had cheap. It’s up a lot of stairs, but it has a big room which has a good light for a studio.”

  “We had better go at once, hadn’t we?”

  “Well, yes. They will be clearing everything out of here in a day or two, and, of course, we can’t go back to Grosvenor Square.”

  May smiled.

  “I think it will be rather amusing,” she said, “ living in a poky little house. I suppose it’s healthy, isn’t it?”

  “Very, I believe. Manvers said it was rather nice being extraordinarily poor. I wonder if you will like it I know I shan’t mind.”

  “Tom, I mind nothing with you. You know that, don’t you?”

  Tom wrinkled up his nose — a trick he had.

  “Well, I didn’t anticipate that you would apply for a separation.”

  “Do you know what father suggested? He wanted me to propose to you that I should bring the baby to the vicarage until things were more settled.”

  “Yes. That sounds an excellent plan. I suppose you jumped at it.”

  “Tom, you gaby!”

  “And what was I to do?”

  “You were to make a quantity of little statuettes, and sell them for £So each. I don’t think he believes in the Demeter.”

  Tom went up to London a day or two later to stay with Wallingthorpe, and superintend the preparations for making the new house habitable, while May and the baby remained at the vicarage. That artist, it must be confessed, was in his heart of hearts not at all displeased at Tom’s sudden change of fortune. He would be driven to do that which he could not be led to. Wallingthorpe had not a touch of an artist’s proverbial jealousy. If he saw or suspected talents he did his utmost to foster and encourage them, and in Tom he suspected something more. The boy’s persistence in working at his heathen goddess really had filled him with genuine pain. He ventured to touch on the subject one night when he and Tom were sitting together after dinner.

  “And what will you work at next?” he began.

  “ — Your Demeter — that is the lady’s name, is it not? — is nearly finished, I believe?”

  “Yes, she’s ready to be finished. I’m finishing her myself,” said Tom. “I don’t think you’ve seen her, have you?”

  Wallingthorpe closed his eyes piously.

  “I’m sure you’ll excuse my saying so, but God forbid! What are you going to do next?”

  ‘Persephone. She is the daughter who is lost, you know, and Demeter is looking for her sorrowing. Well, she’ll find her next year, I hope.”

  Wallingthorpe made an eloquent gesture expressing despair.

  “You wretched boy, you don’t know what you are doing!” he cried. “You have talents, believe me; you perhaps have genius. You are wasting the best years of your life and prostituting your gifts. I must force you to believe it.”

  Tom laughed.

  “You’d better give it up,” he said. “I am quite hardened.”

  “But you’ll starve,” said Wallingthorpe; “you’ve got to think of that. Life-size blocks of Carrara are not to be had for the asking, and on my sacred word of honour no one will buy Demeter or her daughter.”

  “Well, then, I’ll starve,” said Tom, cheerfully. “But surely it would be prostituting my gifts if I simply used them to prevent my starving. Eh?” Wallingthorpe was silent, and Tom continued— “But, of course, I shan’t starve. Those things ‘ don’t happen,’ as Mrs. Humphry Ward says of miracles. Anyhow, before I starve I shall finish the Demeter and her daughter, and then my blood will be on the heads of the British public.”

  “You miserable boy!” ejaculated Wallingthorpe again, adjusting the end of his cigar. “You are an apostate, and in the good old days apostates were very justly looked down on by Christians and heretics alike. You have sacrificed to Demeter and Persephone, and all the hierarchy of Olympus.”

  “You may call me apostate on the day I cease to,” said Tom, “and that will be not just yet.”

  CHAPTER XVII.

  IT must be acknowledged that Tom’s heart had sunk a little when he saw the flat in Bloomsbury. The thought of May, with her queenly Madonna-like beauty, moving through the low rooms or sitting by the small-paned window seemed dreadfully incongruous. But when May came, as she did a few days later, Tom found that the effect was that the rooms were glorified.

  It was characteristic of him that before settling into his new narrow house he made a clean sweep of everything which was unnecessary and marketable. He argued that they had better start with a little capital rather than a few bibelots, and that a couple of pieces of Dresden china or a valuable terra-cotta from Tanagra would only look absurdly out of place among the appurtenances of cheap lodgings. He and May had a small tussle over a few pictures which old Mr. Carlingford had given him during his lifetime.

  “But they are not good pictures,” argued Tom, “and I don’t in any case see what we want with them. Besides, it appears that there’s a half-year’s rent owing for the Grosvenor Square house. No, we must sell everything, May. I only hope there will be something over. I suppose the blue blood of all the Carlingfords ought to be up; but as far as I am concerned it isn’t.”r />
  “I think you might keep a picture or two,” said May. “My dear May, it’s impossible. I can’t think what we should do if we had nothing over. But I suppose some one would lend us something.”

  May frowned; the idea grated on her.

  “We can’t do that, Tom — that’s impossible. Besides, who is there?”

  “Perhaps Lady Ramsden might,” said Tom. “She certainly would if it occurred to her; but I don’t think things occur to her much. But I quite feel with you about borrowing.”

  The outstanding debts when added together made a total which rather appalled Tom, and it was with some anxiety that he awaited the result of his sales. The upshot was that they were the possessors of £150 capital. Tom drew rather a long face when he thought of the rapidity with which money used to melt in the old days. But Demeter would be finished in a few weeks.

  They had settled in during the first week of July, and as they sat together after dinner they talked matters over. To both of them it appeared rather amusing than otherwise to dine off leg of mutton and rice pudding at the top of a house in Bloomsbury. May, with a view to being useful, had had an interview with the cook, and retailed it to Tom.

  “We shall have poached eggs for breakfast,” she said, “and at lunch the rest of the mutton as hash. I think hash is delicious!”

  Tom was looking over some figures.

  “£151 4s. 3d is the exact amount, May,” he said.

  “Isn’t that an awful lot?” said May. “Why, Ted used to live on £200 at Cambridge, I know, and he said it was possible to get on on much less.”

  Tom grinned.

  “I wonder what I used to spend at Cambridge,” he said. “I wish I had some of that now.”

  May sat down by him.

  “Tom, I think it will be great fun,” she said.

  “I’ve always wanted to work for my living; and I can help you, can’t I, by seeing the cook and arranging about hash, and mending things.”

  “I shouldn’t mind if it wasn’t for you,” said Tom. “Oh, but I enjoy it awfully — I do really! And you know, dear, I shall see more of you. I shan’t have to make any calls, and we shan’t have to go I out to dinner; also I shall mend your socks.”

  “I’m glad I followed Wallingthorpe’s advice about one thing,” said Tom, “and learned how to finish a statue myself. If I hadn’t learned that I should have had to hire two of those Italian fellows, and that would have been no end of expense. Six weeks from now will see it done, May.”

  It is difficult to realize, unless one has tried it, how hard it is for a man who has been accustomed to live, if not luxuriously, at least extremely comfortably, to maintain his cheerfulness when he has to make every shilling go as far as it can. Tom, who had been always very extravagant, simply because he had never been obliged to learn the value of money, was suddenly brought face to face with the widely-known fact that wanting a thing is not the same as getting it. Neither he nor May had the least realized what it was to live in an atmosphere of slight discomfort, to have the smell of dinner steal up an hour before dinner-time and invade every corner of the house, to be waited upon by a slatternly girl who breathed very hard and had dirty hands, to sit on horse-hair sofas, to have a cracked mirror over the fireplace, to be obliged to consider the relative prices of beef and mutton, and to banish once and for ever the idea of eating well-cooked food. These details seem small enough, but when all the details of life are slightly disagreeable, however trifling each is in itself, they make up an ensemble which is slightly disagreeable too. Before they lost their money both Tom and May would have declared that it could not possibly make any difference to either of them, provided they were together, that the house should smell of dinner, or that as soon as one castor of the table was repaired another broke; but even as water will wear away a stone, these little things wore away the edge of their serenity.

  July was broiling hot that year, and day by day the sun baked the studio where Tom worked till it was like an oven. The blinds of the skylight were tattered, and rays of light came hotly down as if through a magnifying glass, making little bright spots on the dingy walls. Tom got rather exasperated one morning, because in adjusting the blind he had torn it further, and a long jagged slit of light fell on his face as he worked. It would have to be mended in the evening, but something must be done at once, and with a brilliant inspiration he got the blacking-pot and painted the offending glass with it. Then the brush slipped from his hand and fell on the top of Demeter’s head, and it took Tom ten minutes to get a sponge and clean it. It was certainly more comfortable in Grosvenor Square; but he tried to persuade himself that these things were details, as indeed they were.

  Soon the blacking caked off with the heat of the sun and came filtering down in tiny flakes, and the gash of light fell down into the studio again. Tom lost his temper a little, and climbed up again to paste some paper over it. The paste would not stick at first, and he pressed the thin glass too hard and a small pane broke. It was only a small pane, but it had to be mended. Then the smell of food began.

  Consequently when the slatternly servant came in to say that lunch was ready, Tom was not very serene. He said that they must keep the smell of cooking down; it was only because they forgot to shut a door or open a window, and it must not occur again. He put on his coat and went fuming into the dining-room.

  “May dear,” he said, “the smell of cooking is quite intolerable. I should think on these hot days we could do with cold lunch, couldn’t we? It makes one perfectly sick!”

  “I told them to get a rabbit for lunch,” she said. “You know you told me you were tired of mutton.”

  “The studio smelt like a menagerie,” grumbled Tom. May was a little hurt in her mind. She had hoped Tom would be pleased at her remembering to get something instead of the mutton, and she was silent. In a moment Tom spoke again.

  “And I’ve broken a pane of glass in the skylight That blind is torn to rags. You haven’t been in this morning.”

  “I had to take the baby out,” said May; “and there was some shopping to be done.”

  Tom suddenly laid down his knife and fork.

  “I draw the line at high rabbit,” he said. “I should think this particular one died a natural death some time in June.”

  “It’s very hard to get good meat in this weather,” said May; “it won’t keep. But mine isn’t so very bad.”

  “Where’s the beer?” asked Tom in his lowest audible voice.

  May looked vaguely round the table. She was vexed that Tom should behave like this; and yet, after all, it was nothing.

  “I think Sally’s forgotten it,” she said.

  Tom sighed resignedly and rang the bell, and sat drumming with his fingers on the table waiting for it to be answered. Nothing happened, and he rang again, this time louder; and soon the shuffling of ill-shod feet was heard on the stairs.

  “Beer,” said Tom, curtly.

  The feet shuffled away again and the two sat in silence. May had given the rabbit up as a bad job, and for the time she felt inclined to treat Tom in the same way. When people were in great trouble she knew exactly what to do, but when they were suffering from merely an absence of beer and a height of rabbit she was completely at a loss. Tom sat in gloomy silence and stared at the darned tablecloth and the plated forks. What an idiot he had been, he thought, to sell everything. It would have been much better to have taken unfurnished lodgings, and have forks which it didn’t make you ill to eat off. The entrance of the slovenly servant with a jug put an end for the moment to his regrets. He poured out a glass and drank some.

  “Tepid,” he said.

  It was too ridiculous, and May broke out into a laugh.

  “Don’t be so cross, Tom,” she said. “What does it matter? You haven’t said a word to me all lunch time except to blame me for something.”

  Tom made the necessary effort and laughed too.

  “I’m very sorry, dear,” he said. “I’ve been behaving like a pig. As you say, it doesn�
��t matter. But a lot of things which don’t matter, one on the top of the other, are trying. First it was the sun, and then the blacking, and then the broken glass, and then the menagerie smell, and then no beer and high rabbit, and then hot beer.”

  Tom left his seat and took a cigarette. He had resolved to smoke pipes for the future as being cheaper, but it was no use selling the remainder of his cigarettes. Even his clean sweep did not include them.

  Pleasant things and disagreeable things alike leave a little taste behind. A pleasant episode may be succeeded by an unpleasant one, or a disagreeable episode by an agreeable one, but the effect of neither wholly perishes. May and Tom alike asked themselves what could matter less than a smell in the studio or a stray slop-pail on the stairs; but an atmosphere, however slightly sordid, of things even so unimportant as a rabbit-smell or a slop-pail, produces its effect on all but those who are genuine Bohemians, and who would rather miss squalor and sordidness. Unfortunately neither May nor Tom had the slightest strain of Bohemian blood in them, and they were not inoculated against the subtle poisons of slop-pails and kitchen smells.

  But Demeter progressed and the baby throve, and July went by with hot footsteps. During the day the heat was too scorching to render walking agreeable, and it was almost worse in their sunbaked flat than in the streets. More than once they thought of moving to some cooler house, but shillings were no longer to be treated lightly. The hot spell, they told themselves, could not last long, and it had been business enough to get Demeter up the flights of stairs. Her progress had been regal and dignified, and she had congested the traffic of the house for three-quarters of an hour. So May used often to take the baby into the British Museum, where the gods and goddesses seem to live in a perpetually equable atmosphere; and it was here that Mr. Thomas made his first piece of deductive reasoning. He pointed one day with a little pink fist to the horse’s head in the Parthenon pediment and distinctly said, “Gee gee.” Tom was delighted, and considered Manvers entirely refuted in his belief that the Elgin marbles were unintelligible: even a baby could understand them. Two days later Mr. Thomas conferred a similar distinction on Tom’s own work when, after a prolonged wide-eyed inspection, he said, “Lady.”